


Legis Per Lux

by ReachForTheStars



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar, Sunless Sea
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 19:04:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13324542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReachForTheStars/pseuds/ReachForTheStars
Summary: Many battles have been fought, and won. Many struggles with the horrors and wonders of the Neath have been, if not won, at least survived. Aestival has been settled, renamed Sanctuary...and so now, of course, the real work begins.





	1. Redistricting Reform

I slowly awoke, the fuzziness of my bedroom receding into pure clarity. It was warm, and the light (no longer true sunlight, robbed of that of its spectrum beyond the violet) shone softly through the window. I frowned for a moment, as fading memories of my dreams clung: the yearning for the true light of the Sun, the taste of human flesh unknowingly consumed, whatever it was on the other side of the mirrors of Varchas...perhaps they would never truly leave me. I had, at least, grown reaccustomed to the natural change of day and night.

Then Ruby (“Cladery Heir” was too formal for husband and wife, and she no longer knew her true name) stirred to my left, and I smiled. That darkness was behind me; another glorious day was ahead. I lay there, warm and immensely comfortable, unwilling to rise at first.

“What o’clock is it?” she mumbled. I glanced at the grandfather clock, pendulum swinging slowly on the far side of the room.

“Just past ten,” I answered. I grinned. “That was _quite_ the enjoyable night.”

“Yes. Well. A thorough understanding of the human body does have certain _practical_ applications. Could you call for breakfast?”

“Oh?” I feigned annoyance. “And why must _I_ go and call for breakfast?”

“Because if you do not, I will, with no difficulty whatsoever, paralyze you tonight, at the very moment of _la petite mort_.”

“I am the King of Sanctuary,” I told her, rising slowly from the soft mattress. “Such threats are treason. I ought to have you clapped in irons.”

She sat up then, dark red hair sprawled across her in a wild tangle, bare breasts firm and enticing, even exhausted as I was. “Well, then who would you have for a Queen?” she teased.

“I am quite certain that Nobody’s Daughter would be glad to serve,” I smirked at her.

“And _I_ am quite certain that you would not want hands, used to freeing stuck pistons, or whatever merely _mechanical_ thing she does, on your manhood.”

I leaned in and kissed her tenderly. “I’ll go call for breakfast,” I told her. “Dress, if you would be so kind.” High-born ladies in London had attire that took several servants to help on with, but she had always refused to wear anything like that, I largely agreed with her view of such things, and in any event we did not have enough people here to support such a staff. Our Royal Manor had a butler, a cook, and a gardener, the latter of which attended to other work some days of the week.

I opened the bedroom door and called down the stairs to the butler. His name was Samuel Jones, formerly serving a well-off London family. He lost his position due to some indiscretion he was evasive about, drank away most of his remaining money, and wound up starving on Wolfstack Docks begging for work. Once sober, he proved decent and reliable over months at zee, and grateful, at the end, to be given the opportunity to serve in his old manner.

“Good morning, my lord,” he said.

“Good morning, my good man,” I answered—familiar, perhaps, but I had always found that familiarity with the crew ensured their loyalty—and after all, why not be decently condescending? “Kindly tell the cook to prepare us breakfast. The Queen and I shall have our usual fare. We will be in the dining room in fifteen minutes.”

“Of course, my lord. Will there be anything else?”

“Yes, now that you mention it: once you’ve done that, step over to the Institution and enquire whether the Royal Physician would care to join us.”

“At once,” he answered, and hurried off.

I returned upstairs. Ruby and I dressed. I had no royal robes, and dressed in a quite ordinary gentleman’s suit. She donned one of her usual ensembles: simple yet clearly expensive, and with skirts so short as to go through daring and out the other side. She had on occasion been mistaken for a whore, back in London, which she had always found amusing. No one minded it here: we were the makers of manners, not confined within the weak list of Sanctuary’s fashion (with my regards to Henry V and William Shakespeare).

We walked down the stairs together, but not touching. Except in bed, she always seemed inclined to keep apart, jealous of her independence, unwilling to belong to anyone. Hence, persuading her to marry me had taken some doing. But I would not have her be any other way.

Samuel informed us that the Campaigner was caring for patients and indisposed. These patients were three people who had left Visage due to some trouble involving improper following of roles. Their crude steam pinnace had collided with the reefs off the south of the island and disintegrated; one of them had been badly hurt, and the blood in the water attracted something unpleasant from the direction of the Chelonate, which attacked and seriously hurt all of them. Fortunately for them, one of our fishing boats saw all this and rescued them.

My breakfast consisted of fresh peaches and apricots from the eastern orchards, two boiled eggs (the chickens were fed on food waste), and bread slathered with the recent batch of strawberry preserve. Irem’s defence had reduced the heat of the light: the old tropical species were surviving yet in the forested areas in the north of the island (I made a note to work out a system for harvesting lumber sustainably), as there was no winter here, but the climate had become more suitable for peaches than oranges. Ruby methodically picked clean her usual fish, becoming distracted once or twice by some point of their anatomy, following it with one apricot. I relaxed in my chair, content.

“My lord,” Samuel said, coming in, “the Speaker is here, and wishes to discuss with you the districts for the coming election.”

“Ah, yes. Yes, we must settle that. Ruby, you said you wished to assist our indomitable Royal Physician with the patients?” (She had been my viceroy, until that was no longer necessary; Ruby or else the Speaker could manage things in my absence.)

“She asked me to,” she shrugged. “Might be interesting. I have never seen wounds exactly like theirs before.”

“Well, take some notes for the Institute,” I told her. “Samuel, did you know another natural philosopher, specializing in insects, arrived here yesterday? Apparently this island has several unique species. This is a tiny island, with a minuscule fraction of London’s population, and yet, beyond what I had even hoped, we are becoming a center of scholarship and knowledge to rival the London colleges.”

Samuel waited patiently for me to finish speaking. “Begging your pardon, my lord, but the Speaker—“

“Ah, right, yes, the Speaker. Send him in.”

Ruby rose, leaning in to kiss me as I did the same. “Good-bye,” I told her with a smile. “And no taking the patients’ desires.”

She only raised an eyebrow in response before walking away.

The Speaker was the chair, and leader of, the First Parliament: the ten sailors I had first landed on this island. With our population now 152 (155 if the Visage refugees chose to stay, which I supposed they would), we had decided it was time to hold new elections, establishing a constitution, a bill of rights (the document Parliament gave William of Orange as a starting point, perhaps), and altogether an enduring basis for the governance of this place. A few details remained to be resolved, such as the mapping of the districts from which M.P.s would be elected.

The Speaker, a man by the name of John East, came in. He had been a mere able seaman before landing here, and still looked uncomfortable in his formal attire. I had chosen not to involve myself in his election, hoping to establish a precedent of Parliamentary independence, but knew that all but one of my First Parliament had voted for him. He was a well-liked sort of person, a man’s man, but somewhat lacking in qualifications.

“Cap—my lord,” he began, then looked pained. I chuckled and waved it away. “Do yer have a plan for how ter draw the _districts_?”

I had spent the evening with Ruby, and had given the matter little thought. “Well...having considered the question carefully...I thought we might conduct a...what’s the word, a...census! Right, we know how many people live here, but not _where_. If we recorded addresses—oh, bother, we don’t _have_ addresses. Well, we can assign those later, plot homes on a map for now, and...oh, bloody hell, we don’t _have_ a proper map.” I frowned. “We may as well handle that at once. As soon as we have the map, we can plot streets and homes on it.”

“My lord, that’s another difficult sort of thing, see...the Main Street you planned out, some fellers from the Chelonate ‘ave built a shack in midst of it, sir, over to the east.”

I frowned and called for Samuel. “Samuel,” I told him as he hurried in, “present my compliments to the Adventuress and instruct her to take some of her Royal Guardsmen down Main Street to the east, and remove any persons who have taken up residence in the course of it. If they refuse, tell them that any item left obstructing a king’s highway for more than forty-eight hours becomes the property of the king.”

“Is that the law, my lord?” Samuel asked.

“Er, well, it will be, as soon as Mr. East can have Parliament vote on it. Right?”

“Of course, of course, my lord.”

Samuel bowed and walked off briskly.

Speaker East and I began work on a plan to properly map the island. I suggested that the lines we used for soundings could be just as effective on land, counting the number of lengths from one place to another. Aestival was not a large island, so this method would be adequate. I was endeavouring to determine how to measure direction precisely in the forested areas when there was a loud bang from the direction of the Institute.

“Our quite irrepressible cannoneer is blowing things up again, no doubt,” I noted. “Remind me _not_ to attempt to start a glass industry on this island while that man is here.” It was a joke, but I frowned then. “You know, that may _not_ be a bad idea, if sited properly; we would no longer require to import our glassware from London or the Khanate. The beaches have good sand for it as well...” I scribbled down a note (below twenty-two other items) to instruct our ambassador to London, the former magician, to inquire whether any shapers of glass might wish to emigrate.

No sooner had I resumed my ill-advised cartography lesson than shouting became audible from the direction of the front door. I rose to investigate just as an aged Royal Guardsman (formerly a cast-off veteran of the invasion of Hell) stepped smartly into the room. “My lord,” he said gravelly, saluting, “there are some Khaganians at the door, along with a young man from the Chelonate. There is some difficulty relating to him marrying a daughter of the Khaganian fellow, my lord, some strange foreign customs at issue, no doubt.”

“You know, my good man,” I remarked, moving to resolve this, “it will not be long before Londoners are calling us foreigners. Allies we may be, but we are building a new nation here...and with marriages like the one at issue, we shall be a new _nationality_ , afore long.”

As soon as the Guardsman opened the door, a Khaganian couple, their daughter, someone who looked like the mother of one of the couple, and the aforementioned young Chelonate man all began shouting furiously, mostly at one another, but the daughter at me. I had to shout myself to obtain quiet and inquire what this was about.

“This... _man_ ,” the Khaganian father said, in such a way as to convey quite effectively that he considered the fellow from the Chelonate to barely qualify as such, “is try to seduction my daughter away with no approval of Khan of their union—“

“This is Sanctuary, not the Khanate!” the daughter shrieked. I imagined she would look quite pretty ordinarily; as it was, her face was stained with tears and several bruises. “You have no authority over me! You—“

Her mother struck her in the face. She hit her mother back nearly as hard, sending her reeling backward. Both of the other Khaganians began bellowing at her, her father advanced with fury in his eye, the Chelonate man moved in angrily, and I stepped between them.

“This is not the Khanate, and this is not the Chelonate,” I snapped. “This is Sanctuary. _Any man or_ woman _, of sound mind and body, over eight and ten years of age, is to be considered independent and subject to all rights, privileges, and duties of law,_ ” I recited from one of the few laws we had managed to finish writing and pass so far. “How old are you?” I asked her.

“Seven and ten years,” she answered, after a long hesitation. “Please, I don’t want to go back with them, I love him...”

“This is bosh thing,” the Khaganian father told me, heavily accented. “As she is no age full, she with me. We take and go home.”

“You will not!” interjected the young lover, reaching for a harpoon that wasn’t there.

“Please, sire,” she begged, dropping to a knee before me (does wonders for my ego, I will say that—if you do not know what that is, ask a scholar about the theories of a Herr Sigmund Freud). “I won’t be able to get passage back. Once they’ve got me in the Khanate again, I’ll be theirs...”

“You speak English well,” I noted.

“They were training me, for,” she hesitated, glancing wildly around. “We wished to open trade with London, to purchase, ah, coffee, no, wine...”

She was lying, and not very well. “I cannot help you unless you tell me the truth,” I told her, kindly but firmly.

She scrambled behind her lover. “No!” her father shouted in Khaganian. I told him to be silent.

“We were sent here as spies, after your kingdom was established,” she said. “I was to be sent to London to gather intelligence there, but as you are in alliance with them—“

Her parents began shouting in Khaganian, too quickly for me to understand. I bellowed at them to shut up. “Right,” I said. “You,” I said to the father, “have two choices. Either leave this island on the next ship and never return, or else you will be arrested and charged with assault and battery, espionage, and anything else I can think of, and punished to the fullest extent of our law.” We in fact did not _have_ a law about the latter yet, nor a judge to administer it, but he did not know that. I turned to the couple. “If the two of you wish to remain here, I will allow that. However, I will require both of you to speak, separately, with the Captain of the Royal Guard, about what you know.”

Tears welled in the eyes of the young woman; her husband-to-be gripped her firmly and promised to care for her well. The guards, as I instructed them, took the rest of the Khaganians to the docks, to keep them there until a ship departed for the Khanate.

“Speaker, have one of the MPs draft an espionage law and introduce it, if you would be so kind,” I told him, walking back inside.

“You mean spyin’, cap—my lord?”

“Yes. It needs be a crime to come here intending to convey confidential information to a foreign government. Not overly broad, you understand—we must preserve liberties. Now, with regards to the cartography, why not get some guards and MPs together and we can set to work at, say, three o’clock? We should be able to get a few hours’ measuring in.”

“Very well.” Speaker East rose. “I shall gather everyone I can, and be back here by the stroke of three.” (I mentally noted to look into obtaining a clock for the church being built.) He rose, we said our farewells, and off he strode.

The time was then nearly eleven. I left the house, planning to walk about briefly and see what there was to be seen. I crossed the lawn speedily, as it was greatly diminished; I had never seen much purpose to purely ornamental growths, and most of the former lawn had now been replaced by a sprawl of strawberry plants. Bees buzzed (do _not_ think of the Isle of Cats, do _not_ think of the Isle of Cats...), butterflies flitted, and birds called out. One bird flew overhead, then landed in the strawberries with a fluffle of wings. I clapped my hands and it flew away. I had ordered iron cages from a smith in London to place over the maturing fruit, meshed to stop birds but not light, but they had yet to arrive. Birds were _not_ a common problem in the Underzee.

I passed along the path out of the strawberry patches, and thus to the gate. It had been left open by the Khaganians' entry, and I swung it silently closed behind me but, as usual, did not trouble to lock it.

Main Street ran west to the shore and east to the forest preserve, with the manor gate near its midpoint. Stone markers, some properly shaped and others just heaps of rubble, marked out the street’s path. Additional stone markers had been placed to map out streets to the north. I began to walk north along Apricot Street—or was it Liberty Street? There were no street signs.

There were four houses on my right, and a steaming canning plant at their end. Many of our products would not keep in transit to London, let alone in storage there, and so preservation was necessary. To my left were several others. Most of the houses were made of assemblages of miscellaneous timber, some driftwood, others from the forests on the island, although two were largely made of slabs of stone. Beyond those buildings, the street was merely an arbitrary slash through rows of young apricot trees. I stopped a moment, tasting the sweet air and the beautiful smells of growth, life, and boiling apricot preserves...and a whiff of dung. I opened my eyes and saw a large mess that a horse or donkey had made in the street, presumably while everyone was going out to the fields that morning. I pulled out the pencil and newsman’s pad I had in my pocket and made a note to find out why farmers were not removing that for fertilizer, and engage someone specifically to do it, if necessary.

I walked to where the fields began. The dirt was mostly damp yet firm, although my boot went into a wagon track with a squelch. Without the Sun to drive evaporation to altitude, there was never rain in the Neath; instead, fog rose from the zee, then drifted over and condensed upon the land. Here, the heat of the light prevented condensation over the island during the day, except over the cooler waters of Lake Crystal. I stopped for a moment, gazing up through the shifting shadows of the leaves at the void of the roof, false-stars hidden by the light from that brilliant spot (someday, we would build a balloon and discover exactly how that operated, and where the other end was). I thought of the Starved Men, and felt the old fear return for a moment. Sanctuary always felt like the surface, until suddenly it did not.

I stiffened my upper lip and walked back, noticing for the first time that one of the houses had a fence in front that intruded slightly into the space between the markers. I made a note of that as well—if you allowed that, afore long there would be no street left. A donkey pulled a cart full of fish past as I reentered Main Street. That was probably intended for the market, just east of the manor. Some of the farmers liked to buy fish fresh at the end of the day, so they could be brought directly to the grill or pot. Any fish my (subjects? citizens?) didn’t eat would be taken back to the coast, where a three-person company gathered zee salt, to be salted and packaged for shipment to London. I had heard rumors that Badstevener’s Abyss was becoming overfished, and the fact that this was a profitable venture seemed to confirm them.

There was more time to wander before three, and I wished sincerely that I could. This was a beautiful island. But the list of matters to attend to was long, and likely to grow longer. Regretfully, I returned to the Manor gate.

Samuel had cleared away the dishes from breakfast by the time I passed back through the dining room. I called to him to bring me lunch in half an hour (though I had just eaten, Ruby and I had worked up quite the appetite the previous night) and, grasping some papers scattered about the table, proceeded to my study. I sighed, and settled myself into my chair. My position was one of beauty, comfort, and ease, but the price was that I had to actually make it all work. I examined my ubiquitous list of matters to attend to. Ah, yes...I rummaged through the litter of documents on my desk and found a copy of a book originating from (where else) America, entitled _The Documents of Liberty and Civilization_ (that final word spelt in that amusing way of theirs). I turned the pages, which were printed with a rough translation of the Solonian Constitution, the Habeas Corpus Act 1679, the Bill of Rights 1689, the Constitution of the United States of America, certain documents from France, and so on up to modernity, with the final item the Emancipation Proclamation issued by the American President during their civil war. Interesting people, the Americans, but with some good ideas. I examined the amendment procedure of the Constitution again before drawing out a sheet of paper, filling my fountain pen, and writing “The Sanctuary Bill of Rights” across the top. I thought a moment, then scratched out “Bill” and wrote “Declaration” instead. I frowned, shook my head, scratched that out as well, and replaced it with “Guarantee”. That would do.

_One._ I wrote. _All provisions of this document shall require the consent of four-fifths of the sitting Parliament, in addition to the approval of the King and Queen, or the one of them which exists, to append to, alter, or abolish._ That sentence structure was awkward, but we would set it to rights in Parliament.

_Two. All ~~residents~~ ~~subjects citizens~~_...there was no good word for it. _Citizen_ was too strong and _subject_ too weak. I sighed and set the pen back in the inkwell for a moment, gazing out the window. It seemed a trivial question, but it could be crucial to the interpretation of a document that, I hoped, would be heeded for many years to come. My education had been focused unusually upon natural philosophy, and I was really not informed for this. I suddenly decided to go find my queen, and our indomitable physician, and ask for their thoughts on the matter.


	2. Freedom and Mortality

I rose partly, then frowned and sat back down. I decided to use a placeholder for now, so I could complete more before departing again. Now, where was I...?

 _Two. All X are entitled to freedom of expression, including through speech, writing, and print._ Then I remembered that this was the Neath. _Legislation may be passed placing reasonable restrictions upon information which directly causes physical or mental injury to those observing it._ That, combined with the next point, should cover such difficulties.

 _Three. All X are entitled to freedom of religion, faith, and worship. However, legislation may be passed placing reasonable restrictions upon beliefs or cults which encourage illegal acts, or cause physical injury or mental incapacity._ I examined that, then decided to give judges of the future some guidance. _The latter includes, but is not restricted to, worship of Storm, and the practices of the Chapel of Lights_. I was undecided about Salt and Stone, but the harm those gods caused seemed to be due to an incomplete understanding of humans, not malevolence.

 _Four._ _All X are permitted to peacefully assemble at times and places of their choosing, barring acts of trespass or mischief._

 _Five._ What was next in the American Bill of Rights? Ah, yes. What was after _that_ one? Hmm...why not. _X may not be required to quarter or house officials of the government, including military forces, in their homes._ I nodded slowly. That wording would include those who were tenant farmers on the land I had retained for the royal family, as well as the freeholders to whom I had sold land.

 _Six_. I looked at the Fourth Amendment, flipped to the similar provisions in the 1689 Bill of Rights, and sighed. I understood the intent, but was it not also the case that those with nothing to hide had nothing to fear? I finally resolved to go and confer with my wife and death-proofed physician. I gathered up the papers I had been writing upon and proceeded down the steps. I passed Samuel dusting the furniture in the sitting room.

“Did you get a reply to your last letter?” I asked him. He jerked upright, and I smiled (hopefully) calmingly. He grinned in turn. “Yes, my lord, I did. My mother is well, and was very pleased to hear of my advancement, my lord.”

I told him I was glad to hear it, and continued out the front doors. Such exchanges would be embarrassingly familiar in London, but I had always kept the loyalty of my crew on the zee by being approachable, relatable: loved, rather than feared. I had pointedly kept the works of Prince Machiavelli out of the libraries on the _Liberty_ (my name for the Cladery Heart), the _Dauntless_ (the dreadnought purchased later), and Sanctuary.

I passed through the garden, turning right at the gate this time. The hospital was not far away, with the Institute just beyond it to the east. I glanced at the quality of light from above, and decided to go by the Institute afterward, if there was time, to call on the engineers and welcome the new naturalist if he was there. This being Main Street, it was more worn, with wagon wheel ruts developing on both sides. I frowned at that, but there was nothing to be done about it until paving stones could be brought from London. Per the British Empire’s traditional pattern of treating its colonies as mere sources of raw materials and actively discouraging self-sufficiency, the paving stones of London are quarried from the Elder Continent, but shipped to London (at substantial expense) to be hammered and chiseled (I would assume, as I have no knowledge of stonemasonry) into shape. Most of the output of this process goes to fixing the roads in London or paving new ones, making the available stones expensive and in high demand. I had considered, and rejected, the idea of trying to produce our own; the economies of scale were lacking and in any case our land could be put to better use under the plough, or bough.

“Good afternoon, Captain,” said Sandy Richard, formerly Seaman Richard, as we passed one another, jerking me out of my thoughts. I turned in time to smile at her blushing and hurrying on as she realized her mistake, but did not trouble to correct her. I remembered a few moments later, with her well past, that she was now Sandy Gibbs, hers having been the first marriage in our new church, the day after it was consecrated by the Bishop of Southwark. I took the last few steps to the infirmary door, and opened it.

There were four beds in the infirmary, three of which were occupied by the injured Visagers. I started to speak, but stopped abruptly upon seeing that both of the women I had come to see were wearing surgical smocks and masks and were bent over one of the patients. As I watched quietly, Ruby made a careful incision, removing a very thin strip of damaged flesh from around the edge of a large bite in the patient’s leg. (I understood that in the case of bites especially, this reduced the likelihood of infection.) I noticed that the patient was unconscious, then the Lorne-Fluke core in the corner, and smiled; that had been an unexpected application of the Alarming Scholar’s knowledge of those. As this went on, our Royal Physician fetched a bottle of strong alcohol, then pulled a white cloth (with slight red stains) from a kettle of boiling water. As Ruby continued cutting away a thin seam of inflamed tissue, the Campaigner wrung out the cloth and applied pure alcohol to it. I crossed the room quietly as she began using the cloth to clean the wound, settling myself in a chair. This would take some time.

“Were these boiled?” my wife asked the Campaigner at last, taking up needle and thread. She nodded. Ruby began the ticklish business of sewing up the wound, as the Campaigner went to check the other patients. I tried to study my papers, but could not stop my heart driving me to gazing at Ruby, the iron intensity of her gaze as she concentrated entirely on neat, clean stitches, the rich red tangle tied behind her back, the deep earthy colour of her eyes...

She finished the job and looked up. “Ah, it’s good to see you, what brings you here? I’ve nearly finished this job, and yes, he still has all of his desires. Although I really believe I could have made some improvements.”

“Do the words ‘informed consent’ mean anything to you?”

“Hmm...I may have heard that phrase once, some years ago, when someone was trying to stop me from doing what needed to be done to save a life.” That last was in a much more serious tone than before, and I decided to drop the subject.

“Are you and the Campaigner free at the moment? I’d like your advice on a matter or two.”

The Campaigner heard this and crossed the room briskly. I explained the dilemma of how to refer to those living on this island.

“The matter seems clear to me, my lord,” the Campaigner said. “You are the king of this island, and therefore those residing on it are your subjects. It was your decision to create Parliament, and although it was a decision I opposed, I will of course respect it, my lord. Strong and stable leadership is essential to the maintenance of order and efficiency, and I would support any wording that leads to that end.”

“So do you wish us to become London?” my wife demanded. “Ruled by an inhuman queen, shut up in her palace from a populace that loathes her...” Even here, even now, she had lowered her voice as she said that. “...and administered by the corrupt wealthy while the commoners are starved and maimed?”

“It is hardly so bad as all that, my lady. In any event, this is the Neath. Freedom and personal liberty may work well on the surface, but you know well the end they would have brought to Varchas, my lady. It is no coincidence that strong leaders or strong traditions prevail in all the nations of the Underzee that have stood the test of time.”

“What, then, do you call the Chelonate?” I asked her.

“Begging your pardon, my lord, but the Chelonate harbors a mere tribe, not a nation. Disputes are settled in the primitive matter, by the tribe as a whole, and all the same, violence between neighbors is all too frequent. That violence, and its propensity to increase as the population grows, is why the Chelonate is inhabited by a mere fraction of the number it could support, my lord.”

I considered this. Perhaps it was correct. Khan’s Shadow was the only other example of a “disorderly” society in the Neath, and its existence was only a recent development, prompted by the rabble-rousers and anarchists that every civilisation spawned capitalising upon the distraction of the Khan by London’s arrival.

“Everything must be done first by someone,” my wife answered, turning her scalpel-like gaze on my doctor. “When Athens first declared itself a direct democracy, no other country in the world had done that. When Britain abolished slavery in entire, before London fell, no other country had done that. The American Revolution was something wholly new. Maybe freedom cannot serve humanity in the Neath, but we shall never know unless we attempt to put it to use.”

I had realized by this point that there were deeper divisions amongst us than I had thought.

“Ladies,” I said, coming to a conclusion, “you have given me much to consider. I think this debate needs to take place in Parliament, not in a closed infirmary. I was wrong to plan to present a finished document to Parliament: given the deference of my former crew to me, they would simply approve whatever I did, without the consideration or questioning that this requires.”

“Should we call a session this evening?” Ruby suggested.

I considered that. “No, to-morrow. We still lack a length-of-notice requirement, but I would rather not disturb everyone this evening. In any event, I would like to have some time to consider more carefully what to say to them.”

“If that is all, my lord, I have patients to attend to,” from the Campaigner, who marched off. I looked at the papers in my hand and sighed. How did one make men and women used to obeying orders without question, question? It had to be done: despite my best efforts, an incompetent or malicious king would no doubt rule someday, and it would then be the task of Parliament to protect this island from ruin.

“Look, never mind what Parliament thinks,” Ruby told me, jocoserious, as we left. “We’ll make them learn to be free, whether they like it or not. You should call the people here,” she made an expansive gesture, “not just ‘citizens’, but ‘free and liberated citizens’”.

“I would rather not use the island’s entire supply of ink to write this.”

We reentered the street. A Guardsman saluted as he went past. He was formerly Able Seaman Sparrow, who had demonstrated considerable ability with pistol and cutlass, although he had a certain rebellious streak. I was glad to see him behaving properly.

“Quite. You shall need that ink to print multitudes of posters urging the patriotic populace to support their lord and master unquestioningly.” She smiled cheekily.

I pulled a face at her. “I would be content if _you_ were somewhat more unquestioning.”

“No, that would not please you,” she answered with calm certainty. She was right, too. The sunlight was warm on our backs as we turned into the Institute. The smells of engine grease, coke fumes, formaldehyde for specimens, and acrid chemicals hit us as we crossed the threshold.

The Institute was divided, for the moment, into wings for biology and anatomy, chemistry, and engineering, although we had one or two distinguished natural philosophers whose work did not fit neatly into any of those categories. The weapons men had desks here, but after numerous complaints from the other disciplines, I had ordered their testing facility moved to a new building to the southeast. Looking around to my right, I could see into the wild jumble of parts, tools, and unspeakably complex machines that filled the engineering zone, and saw that our irrepressible cannoneer was not at his desk. However, Nobody’s Daughter, and our man foolish enough to annoy the dream serpents, were there, disassembling the Serpentine. Another engineer (a recent immigrant, if my memory served) was tinkering with a pressure gauge at a workbench.

I crossed the room to them; their usual form of conversation became audible.

“—why are you so insistent about the fuel line? You can get more power the way it is—“

“Injecting the fuel thus also uses it far more rapidly. I’m insistent because you seem incapable of considering efficiency—“

“I am not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I am not. A slower ship needs more supplies to feed crew, and _that’s_ inefficient.”

“Humans can survive many days without food; a ship can traverse no more than a few hundred meters w—“

“Will you _stop_ with meters?”

“It is a superior system.”

By this time, I had reached them, but they ignored me and continued to argue about the metric system, then about whether the London bureaucracy or that of the Dual Monarchy was the more inefficient. The only plausible conclusion was that they enjoyed it. When she reached out and plucked his spectacles off, then refused to hand them back, I decided to interrupt.

“I beg your pardons for interrupting your vitally important discussion, but I would like to know how your work is progressing.”

“Oh, well enough, Cap’n,” the Tireless Mechanic answered promptly, reclaiming his spectacles. “As I may’ve mentioned, we’re trying to make a proper schematic of this, er, device, and attempt improvements. There is only one Impeller, and only can be one Impeller, not to mention the desire-for-self-immolation trouble, but if we work out exactly what that magician did, we might be able to make more of these ‘Serpentines’ for our merchant navy from the dream-snakes caught while I sleep.”

“And our warships, perhaps,” Nobody’s Daughter appended, easing out from below the engine. Something came loose behind her and thumped against the planks they had laid down here (most of the building’s floor was still made of earth, although work on a proper hardwood floor was underway). Her overalls were streaked with grease and some mysterious purple fluid; her tied-back blonde hair frizzed everywhere.

“We have precisely two warships: one uses the Impeller, and the other one, well...” the Tireless Mechanic trailed off uncertainly.

“I see no reason to believe that my Heart would have any difficulties with a Serpentine,” my queen injected.

“And, I would imagine,” Nobody’s Daughter suggested, “that you will wish the new engines to be powerful, so as to ensure the Cladery Heart will be able to outmaneuver its foes, or, if worst comes to worst, outdistance them, my lady.” She smirked triumphantly, but only for a moment.

“For martial applications, might in fact be best,” he conceded, “but for our merchant navies to be profitable, fuel consumption must be kept down. Given what we produce here, additional food’s much less costly than additional fuel.”

“Is this about your supply of Serpent-Traps?”

“Well...yes, look, I need to sleep now and again! Besides, argument is still sound. Incidentally, has the new batch arrived?”

“Yes, it arrived yesterday,” I told him. “And consider yourself fortunate. Even with the high price your dream-snakes command, we scarcely cover our expenses doing that. If we had not been able to set up the station on Hunter’s Keep, and the restraints here for the Clay Men, it would have been too dangerous to do at all.”

He sighed. “It was a foolish thing to do, I know that. But had I not done it, there’d be no Impeller; without it, your bones might well rest at the Underzee’s bottom, my lord. Columbus risked everything for future benefits, he reaped a miniscule fraction; so have I done, my lord.”

“Tell that to the red men,” Nobody’s Daughter answered gloomily. “I imagine they would have a different view of the matter.”

“Bad example, then, but no matter. The point stands.”

I nodded. “Take care to document everything well. I will be very interested in looking at your work, when time permits. Also, we shall be holding a session of Parliament to-morrow, and I would like each of you to be there. Let everyone here know, as well.”

“Will do, anything else?”

“No, that should cover it. We can speak more then.” I smiled at him, and our eyes met, veiled-off memories reflecting back at one another, eyes with that mystic _je ne sais quoi_ , of those who had wandered the broad Underzee. Then he turned back to his work.

After learning that the new naturalist was off in the forest and would not return until evening at earliest, Ruby and I began the walk back to the manor. I was quiet, thoughts churning.

“Does freedom have an intrinsic or innate value, or is it merely that it produces beneficial results?” I asked abruptly as we reached the gate.

Ruby paused, contemplating the question.

“I mean to say, it gives me no advantage to be given additional options that are inferior to the one I prefer. Hence, what use is freedom without happiness?”

“A happy slave is still a slave,” she answered. Her hair stirred in the merest breath of wind from the south.

“Yes, but...look at it this way, for most of human history, people had no effective guarantee of political, social, nor economic freedoms. Life was nasty, brutish, and short. In organized societies, many were enslaved, and even more were effectively slaves, yet they evidently still felt life worth living. The Israelis endured, generation after generation, before being liberated by Moses.”

“Yet they were willing to risk all their lives, their very existence as a people, by following him to struggle for their freedom.” She paused. “Why does this matter?”

“It matters because I need must determine what to advocate before Parliament. I will let the MPs speak first, because if I speak first, everyone will simply do whatever I say, which is not what I desire. If this document we are creating is to stand the test of time, it must be the work of us all, and meet with the approval of us all. Yet I wish it to defend freedom, not of necessity due to intrinsic value, but because history has shown that personal liberty leads to economic success. Venice, the Roman Republic, America, Britain before the bats, even London given how economic freedom has largely been preserved...history is littered with examples. By contrast, in societies in which government serves the interests of the entrenched elites, innovation cannot occur and the society stagnates.”

“You have said this before.”

“Did I? I beg pardon, I had forgotten. In any event, the point is that I must balance sound policy with genuine popular support, and that may be a difficult business.”

Ruby laughed. “You held a crew together through all that: starvation in the open Underzee, killing savage Lorn-Flukes, the deaths of Stone knows how many of their number, and a ship’s engine that was endeavouring to devour them. This should be no different.”

“Perhaps. What shall you do now?” I asked, changing the subject.

“Is it noon yet?”

“Nearly, if not already, I believe.”

“The Campaigner asked me to have a look at the remains of the creature that attacked the Visagers. If those wounds are likely to develop complications, we need to know about it.”

Samuel was there to open the door for us, and close it behind us. The clock read 12:11.

“Your luncheon will be ready in another quarter of an hour, my lord. Would my lady like anything?”

“Bring my usual over to the laboratory, if you please.”

“At once, my lady. Might anything else be required?”

I shook my head and continued back to the study. I sat staring at the books and papers about the rights for a few moments, then uncorked an almost-full bottle of Greyfields ‘72 and took a long drink, wincing as the strong alcohol burned in my throat. This bottle had been here, being emptied a little at a time, for weeks now. I stoppered it again, cleared my throat, and examined my list of items to attend to. Ah, yes, the trouble with the lumber...out came the fountain pen and paper. This, at least, was simple. By the time Samuel brought up my luncheon, I was halfway through writing a bill to appoint a “Head Forester” and lay out that person’s tasks, which would include taking a complete inventory of large trees on the island, setting quotas for harvesting to prevent their exhaustion, and reporting to Parliament and the King about all of this.

My luncheon consisted of more bread (this time with blueberry jam), and fresh boiled and seasoned fish (I had to set aside my work to eat that, to avoid ending up with bones in my throat). A cup of tea furnished the beverage, with lemon and Surface sugar ready for use, but there was no cream to be had. Cows were difficult to transport and fared poorly elsewhere in the Underzee, so transporting them here would be a chancy investment, hence a project for the future. Still, even though I preferred cream to lemon, the tea was better than most cups I’d had aboard ship. I ate slowly, savoring the soft sweetness of the blueberries, a taste I had missed for all these years in the Neath.

Finishing, I glanced at the clock, pendulum swinging back and forth, which gave the time as 12:51. I rang the bell for Samuel to take the dishes away, and turned to the bill again. The difficulty lay in granting a salary to this official, as one of the matters still pending was establishing a treasury separate from my personal finances. I shrugged and decided to simply specify that the salary would be set by the King, as I could see no better way to manage changes in value of the various currencies in the years ahead. Perhaps some language against “kick-backs” would be advisable, though...but if the King broke such a law, who would enforce it against him?

That _was_ a fundamental problem, and not just one of this bill. I surmised, considering it carefully, that even the Americans must have this problem with their President. They probably would still have it in the 21 st century. Time passed as I considered how to preserve the balance of powers. It would help to grant Parliament the “power of the purse”, I decided: to require that any spending must be approved by a majority of them. But if it came to mere brute force, such laws would mean nothing, unless the Royal Guard were made loyal to the laws over the monarch...

I set aside the lumber bill for the moment, and took up another sheet of paper.

 _I, [name of inductee]_ , I wrote, _do solemnly swear and affirm, by whatever gods in or above the Neath that I worship, and by my personal dignity and honour, that I will protect and defend the person and the property of the King and the Queen, that I will obey and uphold the laws of Sanctuary..._ I hesitated. Every man his own barrister? But what else could be done? At least this way it would take more than one bad king to destroy the islanders’ liberties... _,and that I will, if given an order by the King, Queen, or superior which conflicts with the duly established laws of Sanctuary, disregard and disobey such an order._ ”

I frowned at this. It was messy, like most first attempts at anything. I read it over again, then scratched out “worship” and wrote “keep faith in”. The “person and property” line, I realized, should not be confined to the monarch, as the point of this force was to keep the laws within the island, as well as protect us from external invasion. I added “ _and all of the inhabitants of this island, from threats foreign or domestic_ ” to that phrase, then read it again, feeling more satisfied this time. Long, perhaps? Well, my century-old chief guard would be able to say. I folded the paper to bring to her later.

I read back over the lumber bill, made a few small alterations, set it aside, and turned to my list of matters to attend to. Ah, yes...currency. By issuing Sanctuary bills exchangeable for Echoes, I could keep the actual Echoes in a London bank, where they would earn interest and be available if needed for a crisis. Once islanders, and perhaps outsiders, had developed confidence in such Sanctuary money, it might even be possible to spend some of the backing Echoes on infrastructure improvements, keeping a “fractional reserve” to provide for exchanges. However, I had already realized how complex this would be: denominations needed to be set, the notes designed (in a manner that would prevent counterfeiting), arrangements made for printing, and circulation begun in some manner that would encourage confidence in them and their use. I saw no need for a government-owned central bank: a guarantee that the bills were exchangeable for Echoes would serve the purpose.

I drew out another sheet of paper and began to write. Denominations...a one-Echo note seemed small, but people would not want to use the notes if they were too large for ordinary transactions. I decided to begin with one, two, five, and ten-Echo notes, with larger denominations to be issued at a later date once confidence had been established and measures against counterfeiting made adequate. The next concern was that even if we had someone on the island with the skill to design the notes, we had no way of printing them, and I was leery of engaging a London printer to do the job, because that could lead to others printing illegal currency with copies of the engravings. It would hardly be economical to bring a press and printer here solely for this purpose, yet I could see no other way to ensure the security of the currency. I sighed, and began writing a letter to our ambassador to London, asking him to speak with trustworthy printers in London about this matter, and (remembering what the Tireless Mechanic had said) asking for a reply with anything he could remember about how he had wrought the Serpentine.

I glanced at the clock, then began a draft of a bill to prohibit the making of counterfeit money, as there was still enough time. I shall spare you the details of that, except to note that I became concerned upon reaching the bit about penalties, realizing that we had no jail or other place to keep people being held by the Guard, and added the construction of one to my list. On consideration of the more general issue, I went downstairs to find Ruby. Encountering Samuel on the way, I gave him instructions for the dispatch of the papers in my study.

The walls of Ruby’s laboratory were lined with glass-fronted cabinets filled with specimen jars, holding pickled and preserved organs or whole specimens. Many found it disconcerting, and it took some use to become accustomed to it. I paused for a moment, examining something in a jar that had the valves and chambers of a heart, but was far more tortuous and twisted than any heart I had ever seen. Below the cabinets were counters covered in anatomical diagrams, notes, and the occasional letter from London scholars, none of which she ever answered (except with research papers, on the few occasions she brought her notes and mind into sufficient order to actually write one). The place reeked of blood and brine, despite the window by where Ruby was standing being propped wide open. She stood in the pool of direct light from it, attending to the distillation of something into a flask above a gas burner.

“Ruby?”

“Kindly do not disturb me,” she intoned, totally focused on the flask.

I sighed, and concluded that this could wait until evening. There was work to be done in preparing for the surveying. I called Samuel before remembering that he had left to deliver the letters, so I rousted the cook out of the kitchen and we began scrambling around the house gathering rope, canteens, paper, and pencils. I sent a guardsman to the harbor to get the transit, the theodolite, the vernier compass, and the sounding cables from the _Dauntless_ , and then realized we had no proper way of marking points we had measured. Well, we could just stake down bits of paper. I glanced at the clock, which gave the time as only 2:52, and I settled down in the dining room to wait.

At 2:54, John East opened the gate and came through, followed by six others. James MacDonald and Aurora Dupin, MPs, came first, talking and laughing. Three of the current six (although some thirty additional men and women had been issued equipment and drilled every weekend to defend the island if need be) members of the Royal Guard followed, including the Adventuress, scanning her surroundings and her men with equal care and intensity.

Her faster pace brought her to me first, businesslike stride eating up ground. She saluted, and I returned it. Despite her ingrained habit of proper protocol, I imagined she considered bowing to _me_ to be simply too much.

“Have you seen any causes for concern?” I asked her quietly and swiftly.

“No, but I am unlikely to do so before of time. The Presbyterate’s agents are subtle. I warn you again that it was a mistake to keep me alive and to place me in this role—“

“For you to die defending this island has far more meaning than would throwing away your life against some...being from the Roof,” I got in before the others reached us. We exchanged ordinary pleasantries, and I made sure to inform them of the session of Parliament tomorrow, suggesting that it would be best for the guards to attend and tell others to do the same.

“Wha’ manner of thing are we tae be talkin’ of, me lord?” James asked, exaggerating his accent as usual.

“Er, well...suffice to say that I plan to lay the foundation of liberty on this island, but in the manner specified by its people.” I felt ridiculously cryptic. “Beyond that, I am not yet certain. We can speak of this later; there is work to be done.”

The next few minutes were a blur of activity. I distributed equipment and assigned the men to pairs, with instructions for the charting of the nearby streets, and recording the placements of all the houses and their residents. As I desired to speak further with my guard captain, she and I set off to take sightings of angles to some prominent landmarks on the island from the church tower, establishing a rough chart of areas beyond the main settlement.

As pairs of people set to work measuring off distances, rope length by rope length, from the manor gate, the Adventuress and I went on ahead of them towards the church, surveying tools in hand. Sweat came to my brow in the warm light, and I loosened my collar, unsure how to begin, now that we could speak alone.

“I was meant to die at one hundred years,” she said. “My time had come, my lord.”

“No one should be punished for crimes they did not commit,” I told her firmly.

“It is the only way to maintain law of the Presbyterate,” she answered uncertainly. “No further punishment than death can be meted out to those who living too long, so without the penalty of shortening the lives of those loved, many would choose to try to live beyond their proper span.”

“And why should one thousand be ‘proper’?” I demanded. “What gives them the right to determine who lives and who dies? They consign all who are not so fortunate as to be born near the Mountain to the horrors of decay into decrepitness, the ship to Venderbight, and then the...” I shivered unconsciously, “Sanatorium. There is no justice in that either.”

“If were the spans of our lives not so, our numbers would soon increase beyond the capacity of the Elder Continent to provide food to us,” she answered. “You are a man of letter and numbers, and, no doubt, know of the wheat upon the chessboard. The rest of the Neath would not serve for long, and the Judgments would end us swiftly, on the Surface.”

I actually stopped walking for a moment. She was correct, of course, now that I considered it. Yet...the difficulty lay not in the population, but in the increase _of_ the population...I hurried to catch her as she strode on, mind churning at the problem. As we passed the Institute and entered the zone of Main Street crowded with houses, I spoke again.

“What of this? Restrict the bearing of children, not lifespan. Alter the law thus: anyone wishing to live more than a thousand years must refrain from bearing any children throughout their life...such a person must make a vow to so refrain, and to violate such a vow would be punished by death. That would keep the population constant.”

Her face changed, if barely, as that casually tossed idea struck her. As she considered it, I looked around. We had reached the market square, a wide expanse mostly of dirt (with an area outside the church paved, the stones being provided by the Church in London) and ringed by freshly built houses, along with the island’s single restaurant. Other potential restauranteurs had observed the futility of attempting to compete with the luncheons and suppers served by our former tomb-colonist, though there was a pub by the docks, where one could buy stiff drinks and some indifferent breakfast from a coral-encrusted former resident of Port Cecil. The square also had a few vendors preparing for any customers who visited in the evening, such as a fishmonger unloading her wares from a wagon, a former stoker on my _Dauntless_ turned farmer with a load of fresh vegetables, and a woman I had seen here before selling cheap “jewelry” crafted from shells, zee-polished stones and glass, and other things found on the beaches and by Cob’s Way. Some noticed me, and bowed their heads or tipped their hats. I was considering stopping briefly to become acquainted with the peddler of adornments, when the Adventuress spoke again.

“That would be unjust to women,” she said quietly, but with her usual veiled iron. “Men who were fathers to unlawful children could evade punished, as there would be no means to prove who they were. Yet mothers, would have no such escape, my _lord_.”

I nodded, granting the point. “I suppose that’s a difficulty I might not have considered, being a man. Perhaps...hmm.”

“Yes,” she answered, “despite the... _momentous_...changes I have watched in London since it fell, you Londoners still ignore needs of women, and deprive them of equal liberties, all too often.”

“Yes, well, the bats were a good thing for women, on balance, perhaps. I find it hard to imagine that your sex would have been allowed equality in Britain so quickly, well, that limited equality which they are afforded, had London remained upon the surface. Most likely, the invasion of Hell had something to do with that, as the loss of so many of London’s young men created a significant gender imbalance among the generations now in power, and that has historically had that effect. I certainly know that many of the male tomb-colonists I’ve spoken with find this alteration of status of women scandalous and abhorrent in the extreme, putting it down to the direct influence of Hell. Which also could be correct, I suppose, as Hell has a similar attitude to the Jacobins of France in that regard: ‘all are equal once they’re dead’. Still, I see no reason that the devils would want London to gain strength at their expense, which _is_ the natural and inevitable effect of more efficient use of our—wo-manpower? A suitable neologism, do you think?” She raised an eyebrow. “My apologies. I do tend to ramble on, without regard to whom I speak.”

“Who were the ‘Jacobins'?” she asked a moment later.

“Right, you wouldn’t know of Surface history.” I explained the _anciens regime_ , the Estates-General, and the ensuing French Revolution as well as I could as we entered the church. The doors were wide open, letting the warm air flow through the stone building. The main chamber had been optimistically built by the men the Bishop of Southwark had sent, with rows of stone benches adequate in size for two hundred, though our priest would be fortunate to have eighty in here on any given Sunday: many on the island worshipped Stone, Salt, Storm, or one of the even more dangerous and less natural powers scattered about the Neath. That last was a problem for another day; at least, I had already instructed the guards to prohibit from the island anyone appearing to be from the Chapel of Lights. The church walls were made from stone blocks, with crossing wooden beams, still smelling of sawdust and fresh paint, forming the roof, high but not very high above us.

Father Jones exited the sanctuary as we approached. We exchanged the usual pleasantries, taking care to avoid another religious argument, as we each recognized the value of the other to Sanctuary. When we first met, he had claimed that he had been sent here because he kept asking too many questions (and giving too many not-so-subtle sermons) about the temptations of demons to those in holy orders. He had told me that _he_ had been pleased by the chance to leave London and do the Lord’s work here. I had arranged to have discreet inquiries made in London about this, and his story appeared to be the truth, although one never did know for a certainty. If it was true, he was a man of unshakeable principle, and I could respect that; the Neath had temptations and perils that put the lotus-eaters and Charon—or was it Charybdis? I could never recall—to shame.

I asked him to attend the session of Parliament on the morrow, to which he readily agreed. We parted amicably, and the Adventuress and I passed through the door at the back to the stairs to the bell tower, then up the four flights of freshly painted plank steps to the tower’s peak. We exited into the open air (with no wind, a cover over the bell to prevent the rain from corroding it was adequate, and the rest of the platform was open) before she spoke again.

“How do you know so much about this Franch Revolution? You said that your father was obsessed with natural philosophy, and your education for which he paid neglected all else.”

“So he was, and so it did,” I answered, stepping to the edge of the tower, grinning as I remembered the old saying, “master of all I survey”. There was plenty to survey (in both senses of the word, eh?). I gazed south, where the gold and white sand sparkled on the smaller islands, being devoured by the undetectably slow creep of the cold Underzee. “However, I spent much of my time on the long zee voyages remedying that deficiency. I wanted to be able to hold my own in polite society, not to mention that there was frequently nothing else interesting to do.”

“I recall you were already spending a great deals of time with the Cladery Heir then, my lord.”

“Yes, well, she and I were both interested in examining the biology of the fish we caught. And you should refer to her as the Queen.”

“She was not yet the Queen then, _my lord_.”

I sighed, but could not help smiling. “Are you endeavouring to get yourself ‘fired’?”

“What?”

“Fired. _Discharged_ , then. It’s a new colloquialism in Surface factory towns, or so I hear.”

“Learning your language as it is has required great pains on my part, given the utter insanity and inconsistency of its spelling and verbs. I cannot be expected to know every obscured word.”

“It’s _obscure_ , not _obscured_. And...” I stopped myself. Matching wits and words with the Adventuress was not enjoyable as it was with many of the others; rather, we generally just both lost our tempers and became peevish. “Look, if you wish to go to sacrifice yourself to that thing from the Roof, I cannot stop you. Yet you remain here. You should continue to do so, for this is far more important.”

“You are making enemies keeping me here,” she said, lifting the theodolite and fiddling with it. I took it from her and told her to get the remainder of the equipment from its cases. “The Elder Continent is far vaster, in both lands and people, than this island. Even our alliance with London may fail to keep you safe, so long as I remain here.”

“As the Queen was reminding me earlier,” I said, fitting together the equipment, and preparing paper and ink, “every new project must be done first by someone. For you to succeed in escaping this vile and unjust law, this obsolete and barbarous ‘corruption of blood’, would be to inspire others to attempt the same. This may lend itself to reform or, perhaps, revolution.”

“Your first responsibility as King is to this island,” she answered.

I checked the theodolite for horizontal axis error, then realized that her ‘fiddling’ had already corrected that as near as I could see. A verification with the bob confirmed this, and I finished the calibration and aligned the horizontal axis north, squinting against the light to see the false-stars (navigating in the Neath is less of a challenge than on the Surface, because the Roof is sufficiently close to allow one to determine one’s exact position solely by the false-stars). “What is the height of this church?” I wondered.

“I don’t know, my lord. Father Jones would know, perhaps.”

“Go and ask him, what?” I lined up the first measurement on the southernmost extremity of the island.

“Yes, my lord,” she said with crispness verging upon the sarcastic. I turned back to the scope, which was pointed slightly too far east, and nudged it slowly across until the alignment was exact. I wrote down the horizontal and vertical angles for later use, then tossed down the pen, one measurement made. I gazed around, distracted for that moment by the amazing beauty. I remembered noting in one of my earlier Admiralty reports about Nuncio that it was the “not-quite-London-ness” of the place that made it so odd, and considered that it was the “not-quite-Surface-ness” of this island that made it so gorgeous.

The Adventuress returned, jerking me from my reverie. “This deck is precisely forty-five feet above the floor of the church, my lord.”

I recorded that, and we proceeded with the measurements. We sighted on various points along the coast, several buildings, and the heights of the low hills in the north of the island. Many of these measurements had already been crudely done aboard the _Liberty_ , but more precision was always useful. With that done, we began sighting in turn on various houses and buildings, so the measurements could be checked against the rope-length counts. Apart from another bang from the weapons workshop that sent frightened birds speeding past the tower, nothing out of the ordinary took place in that hour. Our conversation concerned only the measurements, as we seemed to have made a sort of tacit agreement to save the politics for Parliament on the morrow.

With the measurements made, we stood there silently, contemplating the land spread out below us. The church clock would have struck four, had we possessed one. I would need to apply the trigonometric tables to the angles to determine the new measurements, but if the old ones were correct, this was roughly 58 square miles of land, with an additional three-quarters of one square mile covered by Lake Crystal, and it was all beautiful and it was all mine, and my task was now to care for it well. The light from the hole began to slowly fade as...well, whatever it was that occurred up there, occurred. One day we would send a balloon up to investigate it, but not today.

“Shall we find the others, my lord?” she intoned finally. I made some acquiescing sound, and down we went to seek the other surveyors and my wife. I snapped my fingers as we reached the ground, remembering the oath draft, and we agreed she would come by later so we could confer about it.


	3. Mayhem and Mail

We passed back into the main square, then through where Main Street was split in two by the church to allow the church to be centered on the east side of the square. Many of the houses here were unfinished skeletons of wood and stone stretching up to the sky, with condensation pooling in their foundations. Workmen were busy at two of them, and the occasional spurt of hammering echoed down the street and into the square.

MacDonald and Dupin were visible in the rejoined street past the church. Here, there was an open space on each side of the street that would eventually be filled with buildings, although a part of it was now occupied by a garden which our bandaged restaurateur owned. That was surrounded by a high brick wall and solid wooden gate he had paid to have constructed, and filled with some very strange plants and fungoids. A strange, indescribable odour drifted from it as we passed.

I could see papers inscribed with measurements in a heap at Aurora’s feet as I approached, but the measuring rope was on the ground in a disorderly tangle. She was trying to set it to rights, but James was standing behind her tickling at her sides. She laughed, playfully but knowingly, and slapped at him. He grasped her around the waist, turning her to face him, and she said something I couldn’t catch that set them both laughing.

“You carry on like that,” I told them, “and you’ll have Father Jones out here hauling you into the church to put in bonds of matrimony.”

He jerked away sharply, straightening to face me, while she languidly stepped back.

“Oh, never,” she insisted mischievously, her accent noticeable but not obfuscating. “I am from _Paris_. We Parisian women have no use for kings, _pretres_ , or marriage. We have use for men, though, until zey grow tiresome, and then...we find others!”

“Ach, I be wounded in me very soul!”

“I would imagine that you supported the Paris Commune,” I said to Aurora, smiling.

“Now, now, a lady never talks of politic, especially when that politic are most undesired by ze Third Republique of France.”

“Fair enough. The work?”

“Aye, the work, me lord.” He gathered up the papers, and handed them over. I had to admit that the notes were nearly complete, and apparently correct, listing the distance along Main Street to each house, and the occupants if they were known.

“We inquired at ze next house if no one could be found at un,” Aurora explained. “We were, for most, able to find ze facts you were wanting.”

“These appear to be quite complete and informative,” I said, looking up. “Do you know where the others are?”

MacDonald shrugged. I nodded, turned away, and then the idea struck me. This was the night of music at Jonah’s Vindication. Though our tomb-colonist chef served dinner on most days, and supper, on all, he was only willing to tolerate the noise and commotion of spirits, music, and dancing, on Friday eve of each week. The pub down by the dock was the place for those things on any other day.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “You lot have done some good work. Why not join the Queen and me for supper at Jonah’s at, say, seven? You will need not worry about the bill.”

Their faces lit up. “Well, tha’ sounds most excellent, me lord.”

“I shall have to take care,” Aurora noted. “The last time I eaten there, ze food was excellent, but I could only speak in, ah, _rhymes_ for two hours after the meal. It was most _distressing_.”

I frowned. “He may have been grinding up blemmigans. I _told_ him that anything that can speak is off-limits, even if it seems to do so more by ‘rule of thumb’ than actual comprehension. I shall have to have a word with him about that...In any event, I shall see you two there at seven. The captain here will find the others and inform them. The Queen and I shall stay there for perhaps an hour or two, although I must attend to other business yet before I retire.” Off they went.

“My lord, did you not allow your wife to grind up blemmigans to extract their desires?” Well, at least she had the decency not to mention that in the presence of the amorous MPs.

“I did not yet fully understand blemmigans’ capacity for understanding and feeling; that served a legitimate scientific purpose rather than mere culinary enjoyment; and I regret it. And I believe that I instructed you to find the other guards and invite them to meet us at the restaurant, and, if I did _not_ do that, I am doing it now.”

“Yes, my lord.”

She had hit a sore point about the blemmigans, mainly because I had never been able to determine a just way to treat them. The ones which were _not_ docile were unpredictable, and dangerous in numbers, so if they possessed some degree of human understanding, were they not responsible for their actions, and was force not justified against their depredations? Yet if one advanced that argument, one could hardly argue that retribution against a group of blemmigans for the actions of one was justifiable...I sighed. Most people seemed to disregard the moral question altogether, using or destroying blemmigans as was expedient, but I could not definitely say that their position was the wrong one.

Thinking of blemmigans took me most of the way back to the Institute, when I heard agitated voices inside the building, including one I did not recognize. I swore, marched up to the door, and opened it, quite irritated that something else, most likely, would require my attention.

Directly in front of me, but facing away from the door, were two Khaganian men dressed like zailors, one brandishing a large knife, and both shouting angrily. My engineers, and a custodian, were wielding long pieces of pipe and shouting back. _Bloody hell_. I immediately put my head back through the door and spotted a man going past, and shouted at him to get guards here and to do it quickly. Without waiting for an answer, I swung back into the room and tried to draw a revolver and sword that, as I quickly remembered, I did not have. Well, there was nothing for it. I advanced, taking care to stay clear of that knife, and shouted for quiet.

“Right, all of you, lower your weapons at _once_!” I shouted—did my voice quaver on that preantepenult word?

In any event, they did, slowly and with obvious mistrust. “Right,” I said. “ _What_ in the name of sanity is _this_ about?”

“Woman steal my money!” the Khaganian shouted, pointing at Nobody’s Daughter.

“Is this true?”

“I know nothing about his money, my lord,” she answered guilelessly. “Most likely he lost it.”

I considered this. That was certainly possible, as was that she _had_ stolen his money. She certainly had a knack for acquiring things without their original owners’ knowledge or consent, and although she had promised not to do this to anyone aboard ship, she had said nothing of the kind about visitors to this island.

“I have in pocket,” he gestured, “three tens and seven echo. Go past here. She go past me. Money gone. She steal my money!”

We still lacked any way to handle this legally, I considered. That obviously needed to be moved up the list of priorities at once. But in any event, visitors were not allowed to bring most weapons onto the island (I was concerned about assassination attempts on myself and the Adventuress, not to mention the risk of lethal quarrels) and were searched for them at the dock. Evidently, this one had got through. I came to a decision, more through a desire for expedience than just reasons.

“Right. _You_ are not to bring weapons onto this island. I think we can consider thirty-seven echoes an appropriate fine for that. I will also overlook your threats to my engineers, provided that you leave this island at once, and do not set foot upon it again. Or else, when the guards arrive here, I can have you arrested, which will delay your ship considerably while you await trial, and charged with those crimes, which will likely result in a substantially larger fine. Oh, and leave the knife.”

He paused and stared at me for a long moment, weighing his chances perhaps.

“I can outrun you to the dock,” I pointed out, “and there will be at least three armed guards there, not to mention a number of my citizens—or subjects—bloody hell, we really must resolve that, in any event, they will come to my aid. You would never get off this island alive if you harmed me.”

The Khaganian with the knife spat on the floor, then hurled his knife across the room. It stuck in a wall with a thunk.

“ _Thank you_ ,” I said. “Would you lot,” I asked of the others, “be so kind as to escort these two down to the dock?”

“Why should I do it? What of the guards?” the Tireless Mechanic demanded.

“Ah, well, I’m not actually certain they got the word to come here. Look, just be a good fellow and do it, eh? Oh, very well, I shall come along as well. I need to give the guards a talking to about their searching of visitors in any event.”

The Khaganian who had held the knife looked at me murderously, but stomped across the room and out the door willingly enough. His fellow, whom I had almost ignored, followed silently. I glanced at his face as he went past, which appeared utterly calm, slack even. Perhaps he was some sort of mystic; I knew that the Orientals had had many techniques of that sort, even before the Fourth City fell.

As the others watched the more belligerent one closely, I focused upon the second one. A strange smell seemed to come from him, I noticed as we passed into the open air, without the confounding stench of the Institute. Perhaps he burned incense while meditating. I began to worry that he might be skilled in some Oriental martial discipline, like kung few.

We went down Main Street towards the harbor silently. Focused upon the Khaganians, I had no leisure to admire the scenery. The plodding of our feet was joined by the noise of footsteps hurrying behind us. I turned to see guards running towards us—so that fellow _had_ fetched them. I quickly explained the situation and instructed them (including a suggestion to take extra care with the silent Khaganian), and they stepped to it. The engineers returned to the Institute, and began to bicker again nearly at once.

I passed back through the gate. With evening coming on, one of the night shift guards would be standing watch here in perhaps two hours, and the gate would be locked until the next...not dawn, not sunrise...“light”, perhaps?

After telling Samuel not to prepare for dinner and the cook that she would not be needed that evening, I returned to the study. I sat, stretching my legs, before reaching for the carafe of water. Thirst quenched, I examined the list of tasks. _Foreign relations_. I was considering adding an ambassador to Irem, given the amount of trade with our island there (our fruit and vegetables for parabola-linen, largely), but the temporal difficulties made, or would make, or will make, communication with that person...uncertain. I leaned back in my chair, contemplating the matter, and finally decided against it: we simply did not have enough people or money on this island to send delegates to every rock on the Underzee, and despite our trade with Irem, what use were treaties when any given ship might arrive before they were even written? I scratched out that item, and looked at the length of the list, sighed, and decided to open the mail which had been accumulating on the corner of my desk.

The first item was a small envelope with London postage and a foul smell, but no return address. I opened it cautiously, and found a worn and dirty, but completely blank, page, aside from a spatter of blood at the bottom, around where a signature would belong. This was the third such letter I had received; the Institute’s scholars had tried all sorts of concoctions and optics on the other two, but without revealing anything else on the page. I sighed, wadded up this one, and threw it into my wastepaper basket. Whoever or whatever was sending these would simply have to learn to communicate properly. It was possible they were threats, but as no one here had any idea who was sending these or why, that provided no basis whatsoever for action.

The next bit of correspondence was a letter from one of the mushroom wine manufacturers in London, and had several paragraphs of effusive courtesies (“Most Exalted Sovereign” was a new one) before getting to the matter: they wished to grow barley here, to be made into beer that would be shipped to London and sold at astronomical prices to those who missed the, ah, barley slurry preferred by common Britons. I had my doubts about the economic viability of such an enterprise, but if payment for land was rendered up front, and our excise tax was paid (once it could be brought into existence—I added it to the list of matters to raise in Parliament the next day), I saw no reason to object to the attempt, and carefully wrote a reply to that effect. There was then a request from the Bishop of Southwark to prohibit the worship of all gods except the Christian one on my island, along with the admonition that my soul would be imperiled should I not obey. As my soul had already been stolen by and subsequently recovered from mangy monkeys on several occasions, this did not cause me great concern, and I disposed of it. There was a type-printed letter with various spelling and typesetting errors that claimed I had won a priceless gift from the Masters and need only send a small fee to the Revenue Men to claim it, along with advertisements for pills which purported to improve one’s virility. I concluded that this was probably a “fiddle”, and disposed of it as well.

Finally...a letter with the code of my spymaster in Port Carnelian. I hesitated a moment, glancing around the room cautiously, then drawing the drapes, before opening a hidden compartment in my desk and withdrawing the list of cipher keys. It was chancy to keep this here, but using the same key for everything would be chancier still: the loss of a single agent could compromise all of my correspondence. I lit the gas lamp, and set to work on the decryption; the flame cast flickering shadows over the pages.

This took a long time, as it was a long letter and I made several mistakes which then had to be corrected. I induced myself not to read it before finishing the decryption. The calls of birds outside began to be replaced with the distant cheeps of zee-bats as evening came on, and the musty, briny smell of papers brought across the deep Underzee grew close around me.

Now, what was here...translating the shorthand used to hasten the encoding and decoding, the message read, more or less: _No indications of any surviving active Khanate operatives. Covert efforts against Snuffers with governor’s cooperation have eliminated several. Some tigers remain restless; we hope to persuade the governor to relax travel restrictions to mollify them; please advise how far we should go to accomplish that. Successfully framed for embezzlement an army captain we believe responsible for atrocities against tigers, for same purpose. Unconfirmed reports of unusual numbers of Dawn Machine ships, nominally of Royal Navy, arriving from west and subsequently departing north. Unconfirmed reports that darkdrop prices may decrease in near future due to expansion of production_ (my guard captain would be pleased by that). It concluded with some rumours about local dignitaries with no imminent relevance. Also attached, in plain language, was a summary of generally known events, such as reforms to the local police, and plans to expand a thoroughfare being vehemently opposed by those who lived along it.

Good news, then, for the most part. I frowned at the item about the travel restrictions. Human understanding and intellect had reduced neither the ferocity nor the unpredictability of tigers; it had only made both traits expressed more subtly. There were legitimate reasons for those restrictions, and at first I considered writing back to the spies that they should cease these efforts. Yet, between hazard to a few human colonists and another petty rebellion, the latter of which would undoubtedly result in the unwarranted deaths of many humans—and tigers, I supposed...

I sighed. Unless we were prepared and able to kill all of the tigers, humans would have to live with them. Nevertheless, we could not endanger our position in Carnelian by coercing the governor about something like _this_. Muttering, and concentrating on the process as carefully as I could (and making mistakes nonetheless) I soon (relatively speaking) had a reply on that point encrypted, directing my agents to attempt to persuade the governor, but to do nothing underhanded about this matter. Worrying about whether I had written the shorthand correctly, I forgot all about the Dawn Machine and the darkdrop.

I found the list again, and examined it. _Accounts_.

I dove bravely into a heap of papers, heedless of the terrible peril of paper cuts. By dint of great struggle through the morass of sheaves, I heroically extracted a tremendous ledger, which I opened on the desk. I soon found that no new entries had been added for the past six days. I looked at the wild jumble of pages and groaned; I was careful to make a note of it when spending or receiving money, but I was not always so careful with what was done with the notes afterwards.

I grimly proceeded to hew away at the outskirts of the great wilderness of paper, sorting them into piles. After a few minutes of this, I stopped and added to the list the establishment of some proper filing system, and, perhaps, the engaging of a secretary or an accountant. I grumbled, but this was honestly somewhat enjoyable: this room had been far too slovenly for far too long. It had been some weeks since I had done really hard work, and as enjoyable as relaxation was, one could have too much of a good thing (begging the pardon of the Bard). Then dust flew up from the bases of some of the heaps, sending me sneezing. I made use of my handkerchief and returned to work.

When I next looked, it was already six-thirty o’clock. I slapped my forehead, steadied a leaning heap of papers, and hastened down the stairs. I was going to look for Ruby in her laboratory, but saw her out in the garden through the kitchen window, looking up at the fading light. The island was dim, but not really dark yet. I opened the door and called to her.

“It’s beautiful,” she answered, almost casually. “Would you care to join me?”

“I told some of my MPs and guards that we would meet them for supper at our island’s finest restaurant at seven o’clock. You should change your clothes—I will as well, of course—and we must depart soon.”

“Oh, excellent!” she said, showing as much emotion as she ever did. “Although, it _is_ our island’s only restaurant.”

“Now, what would the barman by the docks say if he heard that?”

“Nothing. If he did object, I would simply remove his ability to speak.” She crossed the lawn and reentered the house.

“Your jests are difficult to distinguish from your sincere statements,” I told her as we went back upstairs. “You should really smile more when joking.”

She turned her head toward me slowly with a grotesque leer on her face, then stuck out her tongue. I sighed and raised my eyes Roofward, then called to Samuel to bring a clean necktie.

Upon reaching our bedroom, I began to shuffle through the attire in my wardrobe. I settled upon my third-best suit, as I did not wish to risk damaging the others for anything other than a state visit or a session of Parliament. Sighing, I began the annoyingly arduous task of removing my current attire and donning the replacement. There really _must_ be a better way to fasten clothing than buttons, I thought.

Ruby was better at that than me, I noticed: her fingers methodically tugged button after button open on her dress. She dropped it, and I paused, admiring my love, jaw just a little loose, as she casually cast off her unmentionables, and was soon in the altogether. For the sake of decency, I will give no further detail, but she resembled a goddess from a Renaissance painting. She bent at the waist...oh _God_ —I felt a compulsion like that of the Sun, and impulsively reached out and grasped her intimately. She gasped, but then turned with ardor in her eyes, and we might have never reached our supper table, but Samuel knocked at the door with the fresh tie. The Cladery Heir was indescribably beautiful with her dress on; I shall not even make the attempt to put it in words, but she put the Principles to shame.

We passed back through the garden yet again after I instructed Samuel on a few minor household matters to attend to in our absence. The gate guard, one Sergeant Howard, who also handled the dock detail in the mornings, had arrived, and hailed us.

“My lord, the Khaganian with the knife gave an apology—of a sort—for his behaviour. He told us that his ship had been having engine trouble, that some of their cargo walked off the dock at Polythreme (quite, ah, literally), and that a number of the crew had died in strange accidents or been lost overboard during the voyage. However, he, also, ah, had some...unflattering things to say about you in his own language, my lord, which he—incorrectly—assumed that I do not speak.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. You’ve dealt with this trouble well. However, this does not change the fact that guards in your charge allowed a man to enter this island with a concealed weapon. You may be sure that I will be speaking with the captain about this.”

“Yes, my lord,” he answered, bowing his head. “You have my deepest apologies.”

I nodded, and the Cladery Heir and I continued along Main Street towards the square. I should have been cheerful, anticipating a fine dinner and dancing (in the loosest sense of the word, given my level of skill) with my beautiful wife, and, if we both felt up to it again so soon, a night of passion after. Yet something was nagging at my mind, something that had happened to us on the Underzee...

“The strangest thoughts are coming to me,” I confessed to Ruby, just as she was preparing to speak. “Do you by chance remember a time on the zee when we were afraid of something _on_ the ship? It was not that maniacal woman who made me those clothes...no. This was after I’d handed her over to that zubmarine...damn it, why can’t I recall?”

“I recall that...Snuffer,” she answered, after a long moment, halting mid-stride. Actual fear crept into her voice, which I hardly ever heard. “It was worst for the Haunted Doctor and me. We knew that we were the only ones who could find it out. Hence we were the most obvious candidates for its next victim—“

“Snuffer, yes, the Snuffer. That was horrible, yes, but _why_ was—oh _God_.” I hesitated only a moment, then dashed for the docks.

“What are you doing?” she shouted to me, somewhat behind. She stripped away her shoes, bare feet thudding on the dirt. My breath like an engine, my heart pounded in my _chest_ —thank Stone for that. “Damn it, what are you _doing_?”

She drew level with me as I flew past the zones marked with stakes and twine where heavy crates were brought from the docks. She pulled ahead as we reached the pub, and turned, bringing me to an abrupt halt.

“Explain to...what you...doing,” she demanded between breaths. I couldn’t breathe, doubled over, gasping for air. I pointed to the harbor, then my heart, then my belly, and then mimed pulling at my face as best I could with shaking hands. Fortunately, a moment later, she understood. She gripped my arm and pulled me forward, and we began to run again. I felt ready to collapse, but we were nearing the guard station, two narrow buildings on either side of the road, a gate across it, and service windows. I stumbled up to the nearest one and the startled guard (Tom, I believed, with no surname he knew) behind it.

“Kha...Khaganian ship...with the...” I gestured vaguely toward the Institute, “...from earlier. Did they—it depart?”

“We just cleared ‘em fer departsure, m’lud!” Tom declared, panic in his voice. I understood that, given their earlier mistake, but there was no time to reassure him.

“Get your weapons and come with us now!” my wife ordered before I could get my breath to do so. “We must stop that ship.” Her voice lacked the terror of mine, but held iron. I pulled her forward, and we began to run for the dock. Smoke was starting to rise from their funnel as they heated their boilers. My legs and lungs _hurt_ like a wound, but not this time, damn it, _not this time_ —

There was a loud bang behind us. I missed a step, stumbled, and skidded to a stop on one knee on the sand, perhaps twenty-five yards from the ship. Looking back, I saw Tom’s revolver pointed high above the open Underzee. He fired another shot, then began shouting at the ship to stop.

This certainly succeeded in getting the attention of those aboard, but as they came running to the rail with rifles and trained them on us, I began doubting the wisdom of his plan. Swallowing my pride, I raised my hands. “You have to stop!” I bellowed. Ruby came level with me, drawing her revolver (I had no idea why she had that with her). With no time to argue, I yanked it from her hand and threw it down on the sand. Anger flashed on her face, but then she nodded. “Listen, you are free to leave, but you have a bloody Snuffer on your bloody ship!” _That should get their attention._

“A bloody _what_?” came the reply. _Perhaps not. Bloody hell, they must have a different word for them..._ Most of the rifles were lowered.

“Are you—look, just stop a moment, right? I’ll show you.”

While they were hesitating, a voice called out from behind them in Khaganian, too quickly for me to understand. Three of the four men at the rail immediately raised their rifles again, training them on me, though the fourth hesitated. Ruby scrambled for her revolver, and I started to reach for mine; two guards from the station dashed up behind us, with two more close behind. No cover here, just a broad expanse of sand, walkways here and there but that was no use. The guards drew level with us; Tom and his fellow dropped to one knee, revolvers raised.

“My lord, I suggest you get down!” one of them shouted. I moved to do so, then stopped, hands still raised, and shook aside Ruby’s attempt to pull me down on the sand. This was a hell of a gamble, but I knew as well as any what carnage a Snuffer could wreak, and that I could not allow. Perhaps I was about to learn the tightness of the ferryman’s grip here: a place neither land nor zee, neither Surface nor free of sunlight, and far from Hell...

“A Snuffer is a thing that kills men and claims their faces!” I called to them. “One on my ship killed half of my crew before it was discovered! Whoever gave you that last order may not be what he seems!”

“How can one know?” asked the fourth man, English heavily accented, with his rifle muzzle still suspended between land and Roof.

“A Snuffer cannot imitate a man’s character fully! It will be quiet, withdrawn, only speaking when it must! And it will smell of wax, and its heart beats in its gut! The face will come away if—”

Another shout came from forward in the ship, and my Khaganian was adequate to recognize the form of the verb “to kill”. I hit the ground, sand spattering around my body, expecting bullets to whiz past, but the man at the rail (I thought) shouted back in Khaganian and nary a shot was fired. I looked up, fumbling for my revolver, just as a shot rang out. Everything seemed to slow with adrenaline, a familiar sensation to me, and it seemed so _absurd_ that I might be about to die _here_ , on the beach less than a mile from my luxurious home. But only one shot had been fired, so perhaps—

“HOLD!” I bellowed, seizing the nearest person’s arm. One, but only one, of the guards fired anyway, and a bullet zipped over my head well wide, an accident perhaps, but the Khaganians took aim like they meant business this time, but then—I was aware of Ruby doing something extraordinary, but a brilliant flash behind me, with palpable heat, and bright enough to annihilate the shadows cast by the slight remaining sunlight and produce its own, caught me completely by surprise.

The Khaganians at the rail had caught the worst of it, and went staggering back, reeling blindly. More Khaganian voices could be heard shouting, but no more gunshots followed. I rose and began to run towards the ship again. Ruby, cursing, followed. A moment later the idea that those people had just been shooting at me finally took hold, and I scrambled down behind some crates with Khanate markings—unloaded from this ship, presumably.

Shouts of surprise and dismay came from the Khanate ship now, and then a sound I knew all too well: a blade sliding into flesh. Then a few moments of deafening silence.

I stood slowly, noticing as I did so that my suit was now covered with sand, dirt, and sweat, and ripped in several places. Well, it had only been my third-best, and I had no shortage of echoes at the moment. I moved slowly towards the ship, hands raised. “Ahoy there!” I called.

“No one be shoot!” the Khaganian from the Institute called back. He said something in their language, hopefully repeating this for the benefit of his crew. My guards hurried up around me; one insisted upon standing in front of me. Ruby’s revolver was still out, and I thought better of trying to persuade her to set it aside again.

A few moments passed, and then several Khaganians came down the ramp, followed by Mister Concealed Knife. They were carrying something that appeared at first glance to be a quite thoroughly killed fellow of theirs, but one look at the face proved that I had been correct. They dumped it on the sand and stood, waiting for instructions. Mister Concealed Knife, scowling, came forward, and then bowed, as though it pained him to do so.

“I must owes you thank,” he growled. “My name Temur. Means ‘iron’ in England.”

“Did you order your men to shoot us?” I demanded.

“No. That was...that,” he gestured to the Snuffer. “I not like you before, but not want kill you. Your people send ship after us, kill us, maybe.”

“Damn right I would,” Ruby muttered to me.

I heard rapid footsteps behind us, and turned to see the Adventuress and several guards running past the guard station towards us.

“ _Right_ ,” I said finally. “The captain of my guards will be here momentarily, and she can take matters from here. We should have you on your way in short order. All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

“I will love...story...bringing from ship to, to _square_ what I debt. Yes?”

“Yes, fine, excellent. Ruby! I believe that you and I were planning a fine supper prepared by our bandaged chef. We should return to the house and change our attire to something proper—again—and we shall proceed hence.”

She grinned. “That’s it,” she said. “Keep calm, and carry on.”

“I simply do _not_ wish to contend with anything tonight beyond what I already must.” I instructed the Adventuress to tidy up the scene, transcribe a statement from everyone present on what had occurred here, and that we would speak with the guards tomorrow. She agreed somberly: I could only suppose that Navy ships also had the occasional difficulty with Snuffers. All was well, and all manner of thing was well, or sufficiently nearly so, at any rate. We had nearly reached the guard station when my Cladery Heir called back to have the dead Snuffer brought to her laboratory.

She noticed my expression. “Anything I can discover that will facilitate their detection will save lives.” I nodded, unable to fault her reasoning. We continued along the dusty street. She walked sufficiently closely to me for our shoulders and arms to brush from time to time, but I knew she would not for any consideration take my hand or arm.

The question struck me. “Ah...what exactly was that flash?”

She grinned. “I had intended to show you this, which is the reason I carried it.” She drew out from her bodice a small steel jar, which—

“And why did you have your revolver with you for supper?”

She gazed at my curious face for a moment before smiling and shaking her head. “I love you, but you _are_ still a child of the Surface. Even here, even now, this is the Neath—one never does know what to expect. This dress has a compartment here, although its use is not as practical as I would like given the size of my—“

“The size in question is perfectly adequate,” I interjected, grasping at what we were speaking of. She allowed me to squeeze her for a moment, then pushed my hand aside softly, tongue running across her lips. “But to return to your prime query,” she said coquettishly, “this jar holds an organ of the zee beast that attacked the Visagers. Under the proper stimulus, it emits brilliant light, although without nourishment from the beast’s body this will probably not endure.”

“Fascinating,” I said, examining it, for it was. Held in her hand, it looked nondescript, except for the vaguely crystalline bit at one end, which resembled a focusing lens. Now that _was_ fascinating. “Could the Institute have the use of this? This material seems to focus light passing through it...with less chromatic aberration than ordinary lenses, perhaps...”

“I’ll have it sent there tomorrow,” she answered, then kissed my cheek. “Now, let us proceed to the Vindication. Our own chef does wonderful things with the piscine, but the tomb-colonist...” She actually licked her lips. I followed her gladly.

We had to change our clothes again, of course. My stomach began to rumble during this time, and my fingers fumbled at the buttons of my second-best suit until I had to call Samuel up again to aid me.

The streets were quiet again, although lights and the smells of cooking drifted through from the houses. The soft odours of our island’s evening, the replacement of the bird’s call by the bat’s flutter, and the somehow comfortable shadows followed the bubble of light from the torch I held as we walked. (Yes, most lords, let alone kings, would have had a servant do this, but I thought it indecent to make any man, even a servant, walk with you to a restaurant, and then deny him a meal there.) Even my wife relaxed, in a way I had never known her to do on the Underzee, and it was a struggle to move quickly. We were already quite late, and I did not wish to make lateness the fashion on Sanctuary.

My mouth watered and my stomach rumbled like the Dawn Machine’s workings as we entered the bewitching smell of Jonah’s Vindication.


	4. Home

The Bandaged Poissonnier had been with us through all of our adventures, almost from the beginning. No matter how bizarre, eldritch, or desperate our situation, he had remained below deck, doing everything he could to make whatever we had in the way of food, or food-like substances, edible, palatable, and often even delicious. The only difficulty I’d had with him was that, at first, he had some trouble understanding that storage space was at a premium, and we could not afford to have him hurl food that did not meet his exacting standards out galley porthole into the zee (this also tended to attract unpleasant fauna). He’d finally accepted this after suffering through one of our many lean times, when all that remained to us was “long pork”.

I didn’t like thinking of that. The cravings never _did_ vanish entirely.

He hurried up to us as we entered. “Ah! Captain, or King rather! There’s a fair party here waiting for you.”

Like his former restaurant in Venderbight, Jonah’s Vindication was small, but well-lit with bright, fresh candles. There were a handful of other diners at smaller tables along the walls, but most of the people in the room were my invitees, gathered around two square tables pushed together in the middle of the room. The walls held a few bits and pieces of nautical décor, but were mostly bare; the kitchen door was heavy, thick, and well-fitted, but intoxicating odours crept into the room all the same.

Our party consisted of James and Aurora (seated next to one another), Speaker East and another MP (speaking intently in low voices), and the two guards who had helped with the surveying (looking like fish out of water).

“I beg pardon for my lateness,” I declared, pulling out a seat for my queen, “but we were delayed by some difficulty with a Snuffer. The Adventuress is currently tidying up the consequences of that, and regrettably will not be joining us.”

“Ah, m’lud,” John began as I sat, “Digory and I here were talkin’ of the session to-morrow. We can’t fathom what we’ll be speakin’ of.”

I sighed. “Our island requires a proper constitution, either as a part of our laws that uniquely requires a supermajority to amend, or as a separate document. Common-law precedent served England reasonably well, but we can do better than that uncertainty and flimsiness here.”

“Sounds most right and proper, m’lud. What came of the, uh, surveyin’?”

I alternated between perusing the menu, and explaining the information we had collected and my plans to draw districts for parliamentary elections based upon it. I considered the special, but the special in this establishment was always taking a chance: it would almost always taste excellent, but one could never be sure what effects it would have.

When the Poissonnier came to take our orders, I remembered. “You haven’t been grinding up blemmigans, have you?” I asked him sternly.

“Dead ones washed up on shore about a week ago. Still safe to eat, well, to the extent that they ever are, but the culinary masterpiece is always worth the risk. That young lady engineer of yours ate the stew I made of them, and seemed to quite enjoy it.”

I sighed, and decided not to bother trying to talk him out of doing that. I ordered one of his more ordinary dishes, and spent the next several minutes speculating with Ruby about how dead blemmigans might have washed up here. The server brought wine. I took a quaff from my wine glass, still a little shaky from the fracas.

“Say, John, whereabouts are you from?” I asked him.

“Mutton Island, m’lud, and proud of it,” he answered. “We make the finest rubbery lumps an’ zider in the ‘ole Underzee. That is...we did, before the...well, you know what happened...”

“The Dawn Machine,” I muttered darkly. “That thing...the Admiralty should know far better than to make common cause with that monstrosity. It’ll be the death of us all if left unchecked.”

John’s frown grew deeper. “I’d heard tell it was the Machine, but didn’t know for certainty. Some said it was just the Admiralty, tramplin’ on Britons’ freedom as they do now.”

“There’s less and less distinction between the two these days...I beg your pardon for asking.” I raised my glass. “To freedom!” I announced to the table.

“I’ll drink to that,” he said, and joined the others in downing his wine.

“We must limit the king’s powers to preserve freedom here, Speaker East,” my wife said to him. “I hope you will support that in Parliament to-morrow.”

“Oh? And what of _your_ powers?” I asked her.

“I hardly think dissection of piscine specimens is a threat to islanders’ civil liberties.”

“Now, that’s hardly fair,” I teased. “You control me, and I rule this island, therefore you rule this island. Some old Greek said that. Or something like it. Or maybe he was Roman.”

“The only part of you that I can control, I cannot name in polite—“

“No, he was definitely Greek,” I cut back in. Ruby elbowed me in the side. I retaliated by kicking her shin under the table. She responded by grasping my right arm and jabbing her finger once, then twice into a place near my shoulder, at which point my entire arm went limp. I tried to lift it and nothing happened. I swore at her loudly, prompting general laughter.

“Don’t worry, it’ll wear off in a moment,” she said with a wry smile. Indeed, with pins and needles, the feeling was already coming back. As soon as my hand was up to the task again, I made a quite uncouth gesture at her with it, to more laughter.

“If you don’t mind me saying, milord, you’re not much like any king I’ve ever heard of,” opined the MP, Digory.

“I’ll drink to that!” I declared, swallowing more wine. I felt much better already.

“To blazes with the Traitor Empress!” one of the guards declared. “We’re Sanctuarian—Santuaries—Santcuntians—oh, bloody hell!”

It was at this point that I observed a large, empty wine bottle already on the tabletop.

I forgot the worries and perils of my office over the next quarter hour, as we drank more and spoke of past voyages and what was to come for our island. The patriotic guard, Luke Smith, proposed that we would soon rule the Underzee, which I promised to add to my list of long-term ambitions, and he declared that _he_ would drink to _that_. By the time our cook came with our food, bewitching smells swirling through the room, the other guard was leading us all in “The Old Dark Ocean under the World”. Wine on an empty stomach, eh?

My food was nothing especially radical by the standards of our Chef-Paramount, yet I can still only compare the experience of the first bite, to that of my queen, my bed, and a long night still before us. I can’t even recall now exactly what it was, only that it seemed to light fires in my mouth one instant and quench them in a cool tang the next, to unslip my mind from reality to wander to London, to the Surface, to the wide emptiness of the cold Underzee, Salt and Stone and Storm, fire, brimstone, softly purring tigers in steaming jungles, endless mirrors and endless light, the wounded Mountain, THE SUN THE SUN THE—

I was snapped back to reality by a very strange noise from Guardsman Smith. I opened my eyes, observing first, that he had ordered and received the special, and second, that his face was turning bright red. This was not the red of toil in the cold; this was the red of hot coals in a brazier. He was looking, evidently in some upset, at his hand, which was also red. As what was happening caught others’ attention, his skin went from red, to orange, and without hesitation on into yellow. When he began to turn green, I shouted for the chef, who walked swiftly but did not run from the kitchen. By the time he reached the table, Smith had already passed through green into the deep blue of a clear evening Surface sky.

“Ah! That was unexpected! Well, no harm seems to be done here, then, although—” I followed his gaze. Rather than turning violet, Smith was becoming irrigo. I could feel my memories beginning to slip and unravel, pages of truth and sanity pulled from their bindings and scattered to the winds, and began to rise from the table to find cover. The Chef-Paramount cursed, seized the wine bottle, picked out a morsel from my wife’s dish, and dashed one after the other into Smith’s mouth. He began to cough violently, but the irrigo glow faded, leaving me to wonder just what if anything I had lost. Almost certainly nothing, I assured myself; the exposure had been neither lengthy nor direct.

“Well! That worked, in any event. I really must determine how the Neath’s colors found their way into the thing, though. Tricky stuff, irrigo...” He noticed me glaring at him, hands on hips. “What?...What did I do?...Oh, very well, Mr. Smith here may have a refund...Fine, _and_ a different meal!”

I nodded sternly, and sat again. “How do you feel, Mr. Smith?” I asked him. His skin had returned to its usual colour.

“I’m alright now,” he answered after a moment. “It was only the fright, is all. I didn’t feel nothing else.”

“One of these days, he is going to kill someone,” my wife complained. “I have no objection to studying the Underzee’s creatures, but I do not feed unknown pieces of them to fellow men and women to observe the results. Though I will grant his food is excellent—”

“Ruby, I understand what you’re saying. I shall talk with him again, and if that doesn’t work we’ll pass a law. But must we concern ourselves with this now?”

“No, we need not,” she answered, and took another bite.

Perhaps it was the wine, but within five minutes, Smith was already joking, to general mirth, that he should be brought to the Institute for use in the study of optics, which he pronounced “ape-tucks”. Ruby was soon smiling and rubbing my thigh under the table with her free hand, while Speaker East told a humorous story about a drunk from back home who kept begging for money, insisting that he needed it to buy a stone jug and an ear of corn. “But after a few weeks a’ that, he went ter zee. At least. Tha’s what the Magpie barman said he did, I never saw ‘im again.”

We ate and drank, as the candles slowly burned lower, talking and laughing. As we were finishing our meals, the musicians arrived: Abraham Underwood, with his tightly tuned fiddle; Kathryn Clark, clutching her fine brass trumpet; and Alice Kenney with her pipe. We quickly finished our meals as the Chef-Paramount’s hired server cleared away the tables and chairs from one side of the room, leaving a sizable space in front of the musicians. I went over to make some polite inquiries to Abraham, who had joined my crew less than a month after I first obtained a ship; we had been through much together, and his music had definitely helped keep the crew sane in the dark expanses of the Underzee. He told me that he was planning to sell much of his land grant, as he had no skill for agriculture, and I suggested that I’d be willing to buy it back from him at an excellent price, in thanks for his long service. He was pleased with this idea, and I told him to come by the manor on Monday to resolve the details.

By that time, the tables had been cleared away, and couples were beginning to gather on the dance floor. A handful of people who had not been there for supper began to crowd into the room, most handing the server a few echoes for a ticket entitling them to the cheap mushroom-wine. Speaker East seemed be shaking the hand and slapping the back of everyone, while the guards eyed a wild-looking couple from the Chelonate suspiciously. I spotted the Chef-Paramount locking the kitchen securely and saying a few words to his employee before making a swift exit.

The musicians took up their instruments. “Shall we?” I asked Ruby, offering my hand. She cocked an eyebrow, hesitated, and then took it.

Neither Ruby nor I had learnt how to do this properly. It was a fast song, and we tried to make up for in enthusiasm what we lacked in skill. Our Scotch MP swung our French communard about expertly, sending her blushing and laughing, as John danced with a young woman who had been exiled from Varchas. Couples I knew less well swirled around me, with a total of perhaps thirty people in the room. Dancing, even when not done properly, held all the exhilaration of a saber duel, with none of the impending terror of death to mar it. Ruby’s touch was even more intoxicating than the wine I had drunk, except when it came in the form of her accidentally kicking me in the shin, which she did three times before the song had finished. Of course, I had kicked her four times by then, so I could hardly complain.

When the musicians stopped for a moment, we made our way back to seats, to catch our breaths and nurse our wounds.

“I need to have someone teach me this properly,” I told her, easing myself into a chair.

“Or, perhaps, you should not drink so much before doing it,” she answered.

I pulled a face at her. Truth be told, I was a bit unsteady. “Perhaps we should be going back,” I said, deliberately enunciating. “There were...papers, matters to attending, the work...oh, hell, I’ll deal with it in the morning!”

“You had better,” she answered calmly. “This island is your responsibility.”

“I know, I know, and I will. But look at this!” I swept my arm expansively, nearly slipping from my chair as I did so. “This is beautiful! These people! We’re building a nation of these people, and for them! This is what I’m doing this all for...! And for you. You know I love you, yes?”

“Of course I know that,” she murmured, gripping my hand.

“And you love me.”

She gave the tiniest sigh. “Love can be an obsession. Obsessions are unhealthy. But if how I feel about you is an obsession, it is one that I would never excise.”

I smiled wryly. I knew that was the best I was going to get from her, and it was enough for me. We leaned against each other, her head resting on my shoulder for a few moments, and I felt entirely serene for the first time in a long while. The song ended, and a slower one began. We could dance to this without injuring one another, and so we did.

After a few more drinks, I was in no state for matters of state, even if my state of mind had been suitable. Hour followed hour in a swirl of wine and music and dance, much of which I could not clearly recall. James and Aurora were soon kissing passionately, the Chef’s server was dancing with East, and Miss Kenney’s quaffing of mushroom wine between songs soon made her playing increasingly idiosyncratic. At last, we became sleepy and weary, and bid farewell to the remaining revelers, before setting out back for home. Ruby allowed me to lean on her, but only because I was too tired and drunk to walk straight otherwise.

We passed through the rows of freshly built houses. The lights had been put out in most of them, as those uninterested in revelry had gone to bed. As on the zee, we could find our way, even by the faint light of the false-stars.

In contrast, as we passed the Institute, many lights still seemed to be burning. In the state I was in, I found this very objectionable. I lurched away from Ruby and staggered towards the door.

“Oi!” I slurred loudly. “Go to sleep! Lights off! Go home! This is a royal proclur—proclear—proclasation!” I didn’t generally drink this much...

Ruby hurried after me and seized me by the shoulder. “Now, stop that,” she chided me. “Let me help you in, and we’ll find the root of the matter.”

I responded by leaning in and kissing her on the mouth. After a few moments, she pulled away, opening the door. “Hello?” she called out into the main room softly. The lights seemed to be coming from by where the Serpentine was. Strange thumping noises came from that direction, then heavy breathing.

“Stay here,” Ruby told me, both of us uncertain now. The light flickered, and it was hard to see whether it was just shifting shadows, or whether something sinuous was moving freely by the dream-snake engine...

I wanted to stay with her, but hardly had a choice, as I could scarcely move without her help. She advanced cautiously into the shadows. A moment passed, then another, and then she began to laugh, easily and freely. A few more moments brought her back into view, followed by the Tireless Mechanic, face red with embarrassment, and Nobody’s Daughter, face flushed and wry.

“I found these two in a passionate embrace behind the tool cabinet,” my wife informed me. “How shall we punish such atrociously outrageous behavior?”

“Pay for their weddin’?” I suggested. The mechanic’s face flushed more deeply. “Weddin’ night would be a bit awk-wud, though, what with needin’ a Clay Man and mire-catchin’ box an’ all...” The Tireless Mechanic’s face now resembled Guardsman Smith’s immediately after that first bite. Ruby chuckled.

Nobody’s Daughter laughed. “We’ll let you know about that,” she said. “Next month, perhaps?”

“If you wish to exchange saliva, do it at home,” Ruby told them. “Put out the lights here and lock up.”

“Of course, of course, at once,” the Tireless Mechanic blurted, hurrying away.

Ruby helped me up from the pile of boxes supporting my weight. Back out the door we went, for at least the third time that day, with all the grace and stability of a pair of tomb-colonists. I was disturbed by that thought as we made our way to the gate: that one day, Ruby and I would grow old, would wither...my mind flicked to a rumour I had heard years ago, of a man in London’s Blind Helmsman who knew of how immortality might be stolen...someday, perhaps...

The gate-guard saluted, and quickly unlocked and pulled open the gate. We staggered up the path, sharing strength and warmth. Behind us, the guard shut the heavy gate, turning the key and resuming his post, a few feet inside it.

The quiet manor already felt like home. Ruby had to call the butler to help me up the stairs and into bed. I had no energy for passion, although perhaps I would in the morning if my head wasn’t too bad. But just then, I let peace fill my body and mind, continuing willingly into a dreamless sleep, utterly content.


End file.
